


before (and now)

by darkmillennium (orphan_account)



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, BAMF Piper McLean, Best Friends, First Meetings, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Mild Language, Past Jason Grace/Piper McLean, Racism, leo gets to punch a racist in the face so that's fun, the major character death is jason btw, there isn't enough piper & leo content so here i am contributing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:34:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22634389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/darkmillennium
Summary: They were different, before.Before Jason, before the Grand Canyon, before demigods and New Rome and Gaea and everything else in between, they had just been Leo and Piper. Them against the world—or, rather, the Wilderness School.
Relationships: Piper McLean & Leo Valdez
Comments: 5
Kudos: 51





	before (and now)

**Author's Note:**

> HI SO I'VE LITERALLY NEVER WRITTEN ANYTHING FOR THIS FANDOM BEFORE but in all honesty i love leo and piper's friendship so much and i also wanted to touch on the fact that they both basically had the beginning of their whole friendship sort of erased in order to fit jason in there? not only that, but i wouldn't put it past hera to also subsequently change their personalities just enough so that they'd contribute to both jason and the quest(s) in the way that she wanted them to. idk maybe it's just me.

They were different, before. 

Before Jason, before the Grand Canyon, before demigods and New Rome and Gaea and everything else in between, they had just been Leo and Piper. Them against the world—or, rather, the Wilderness School. 

They met in English class, both sitting at the back-left of the classroom, both absolutely _done_ with the world and what it had to offer them. The classroom in question was old, in need of renovation, being taught by a teacher who seemed oblivious to the couple practically on top of each other in the back-right of the class and the weird kid in the front chowing down on what looked like a bright green version of the school’s pathetic excuse for meat.  
  
It happened like this.

First: Piper McLean found herself being stared at by a scrawny, Latino version of an elf.  
  
Second: He opened his mouth, a devious tilt to his smile and his eyes wild enough to mirror someone who’d just taken a _whole_ lotta cocaine in a very short period of time.  
  
Third: She threw her pencil at him, told him to shut the fuck up before they got detention (because out of everything currently happening in the classroom, Mr. Morrison couldn’t handle _talking in class_ ), and looked back down to where she had been doodling on her worksheet.  
  
Fourth: He grinned, introduced himself as Leo, and proclaimed that they would get along fantastically.  
  
Fifth: They got detention.  
  
It wasn’t until he winked and executed a somewhat-genius plan to escape the pure and utter boredom of the silent detention classroom and the plan actually _succeeded_ that she gave her name to the Leo kid.  
  
After that, they became fast acquaintances, passing notes back and forth in Mr. Morrison’s class and seeing who could make the other laugh the loudest by pulling the dumbest face. So far, Leo was in the lead, but not for long. They always ended up in detention, but it was always worth it.  
  
They had other classes together, but in all of them they sat so far apart from each other that there was no point in attempting to talk. Leo might’ve been able to nail the landing of his paper planes, but with Piper’s luck, she’d just manage to throw it in one of their teachers’ eyes. She _would_ sit with him at lunch, but he always seemed to disappear around lunchtime so she never _could._  
  
It isn’t until he walks into English one day with a black eye and a bruise on his cheek that she _really_ takes more interest in him.  
  
“Holy _shit,_ ” she says, staring at him with raised eyebrows, “what _happened_?”  
  
But instead of countering with one of his snarky, sassy remarks, Leo just stared down at the desk in front of him, mouth pulled into a tight line. He was still, too, which began to worry her. Leo was never still.  
  
She tried again. “Leo, are you okay?”  
  
“Fucking peachy,” he snapped, and then looked just a little guilty. “Sorry.” There were no silly nicknames, no invitation to bad-mouth whoever it was that had apparently knocked him on his face. He was just...quiet.  
  
“It’s fine. Who did that to you? Or, actually, who am I going to have to beat up?”  
  
He looked at her in surprise. “Shit, Piper, you don’t have to do that.”  
  
“‘Course I do. Now what happened?”  
  
At the reminder, Leo’s face turned to one of irritation. “Ugh. You remember Drake?”  
  
Drake. The senior who thought it fun to choose an underclassman every week and harass the living _hell_ out of them. She hated him. If she still had the car she asked for (not _stole,_ asked for) she would’ve run him over by now. And then put it in reverse, just to be sure.  
  
“ _H_ _e_ did that to you? I’m going to-”  
  
“Come on, Pipes, it’s not that big of a deal. I’ve had worse.”  
  
“He’s still an asshole.”  
  
“True.”  
  
Not much was said between them after that. It wasn’t until later that afternoon, when she was walking to her locker, that she heard shouting. Turning the corner, she saw Drake and a couple of his lackeys surrounding someone against the nauseating pea green of the Wilderness School hallways.  
  
“Fuck off back to Mexico, you little shit!”  
  
Then, she saw a fist—a very _familiar_ fist—fly out and clock Drake right in the nose. As Drake reeled back, swearing up a storm, the other two made a grab for the still-hidden figure, though he wasn’t hidden for long. As Piper watched, Leo ducked and rolled away from their grasp and began taking off down the hallway, with Idiots One and Two close on his heels.  
  
“ _Hey!_ ” Piper finally shouted down the hallway, somehow catching the attention of everyone, including Leo. “Get the _fuck_ away from him!”  
  
To her surprise, they listened, all immediately shuffling away from Leo, who appeared at a loss as to why they were actually listening to her. So was she, but instead of questioning it, she marched down the hallway, reared her fist back, and knocked the closest idiot—Idiot One, it looked like—straight in the mouth while he was still paused. She was a bit too short to aim for the nose, and the guy looked well over six feet. Her hand stung, but _damn_ did it feel good.  
  
“Don’t _ever_ go near him again, got that? Stay _away!_ ” The last word was a shout. If she hadn’t been so angry, she might have noticed that the boys nodded and ran away, following her command just like the car dealer had. Instead, she focused her attention onto Leo, who was watching with his mouth forming a perfect “O”.  
  
“Nice move,” she grinned, referring to his duck-and-roll. There was no point in asking whether he was okay or not, and they both knew that.  
  
“Nice shot to the teeth. Think it knocked one out?”  
  
“Hopefully. I don’t think I’m that strong, though.”  
  
Leo relaxed and gave her a smirk “I wouldn’t be surprised if you were stronger than you thought. I mean, you did sort of just send them running.” Then, his teasing smirk came back. “Do you _normally_ show up to rescue poor, innocent souls like me often?”  
  
“You? Innocent? Sorry, I’m pretty sure that breaks the laws of physics.”  
  
“What would you know about physics? You failed the last test!”  
  
“Yeah, and _you’re_ gonna help me _not_ fail next time. I saw your grade, Valdez, you _owe_ me.” And with that, she grabbed his arm and began marching them both down to the library. Leo laughed and then whistled as loudly as he could.  
  
“Getting dragged into the unknown by a pretty girl? Count me in!”  
  
“ _I will break_ your _teeth!”_  
  


After that day, they grew to be nearly inseparable. In the classes where they didn’t sit near each other, Piper purposefully sat next to him and glared at anyone who tried to separate them, including teachers who eventually just gave up and moved on. They spent detention together constantly, talked _plenty_ of shit about Isabel and her gang that constantly sneered at Piper, and “studied” together in the library, if “study” meant “play-hide-and-seek-in-the-bookshelves-before-the-librarian-makes-us-leave.” Piper even became a regular visitor at Leo’s dorm, which he didn’t have to share with a roommate because there were an odd number of male students and he’d drawn the metaphorical lucky straw. She didn’t care that the boys and girls weren’t allowed to go to each other’s dorms—it wasn’t like anyone bothered to check, anyways (well, except Coach Hedge, but it was easy to avoid him once you figured out what made him tick). And the sleepless nights they spent whispering in the dark, trading stories and jokes and quiet truths about themselves to each other, were more than worth the feeling of walking around like a zombie in the morning.  
  
Somewhere along the line, Leo Valdez had attached himself to her hip as the brother she’d never had, and she wouldn’t have traded it for the world.  
  
Her love for her pseudo-brother grew even more when she finally confided in him that she was the daughter of Tristan McLean and he did nothing but tease her about her father’s latest starring role. Leo didn’t treat her differently, didn’t look at her like she was suddenly the _daughter of Tristan McLean_. He just talked to her and looked at her like she was _Piper,_ his best friend that he met in delinquent school. Almost nothing had ever meant so much to her.  
  
And sometimes, Leo would confide in her too, though it was much less than she did him. Leo, though often light-hearted, was rough around the edges, occasionally displaying little quirks and behaviors that he’d picked up from living on the streets. If there were ever any comments directed at him like the one Drake had made, his responses were laced with venom and his eyes would turn as cold as ice. If someone made a fast movement around him that he wasn’t expecting, he’d freeze for a moment, his shoulders hunching over like he was trying to curl in on himself, before loosening up when he realized there was no danger. He was complicated and a bit reclusive sometimes, but he was Piper’s friend, and she wouldn’t have him any way except wholly himself.  
  
In the darkness of his dorm room, they sat shoulder-to-shoulder on the bed, backs against the wall.  
  
“My mother’s dead,” he admitted, in a voice so quiet that she had to strain to hear it. “Today’s her birthday.”  
  
Piper said nothing. There was nothing to say. She rested her head on his skinny shoulder and slipped her hand into his, squeezing it when his frame started to shake and silent tears slipped down his face.  
  
He told her about some of the foster homes he had lived in. Sometimes, the story made for a good laugh. Other times, the words were hurried and stilted, some parts glossed over and ignored entirely. All of them ended with him running away.  
  
She’d tell him about her father and the gigantic divide that had blossomed between them, about Jane and the many ways in which she had made Piper’s life miserable. Leo listened, his long fingers tapping the same rhythm that they always did onto her hand. Piper wondered if that was just a sort of beat that constantly pulsed through his head, manifesting in the form of restless ADHD.  
  
They weren’t much. They were just two kids at delinquent school. Piper was the girl who constantly started arguments, Leo was the overly-hyper social outcast, and both of them could pull some terrifyingly effective pranks when they set their minds to it. But they were _them_ , the brother and sister in all but blood that teased each other mercilessly and always tripped each other in gym class and snuck shitty cafeteria food off of each other’s trays when they thought the other wasn’t looking.  
  
And then, all of that changed.  
  
Jason came, and the Mist didn’t just alter their memories in order to fit in a person who was never there; it altered _them._ _  
__  
_Suddenly, Piper McLean was not as reckless and mischievous as she had been; instead, she was more responsible, more level-headed, more devoted to her new boyfriend. Leo Valdez, too, was changed, with _everything_ suddenly becoming a joke. He was shaped to be more outspoken, more comedic, easier to manipulate into the person who would one day sacrifice himself to stop Gaea with whispers of _the seventh wheel_ wedging themselves into his brain.   
  
Their sibling-like bond was still there, of course. They could still sometimes read each other without a word, and some of the inside jokes from the Wilderness School had carried over into their new memories. It was just suppressed in order to accommodate Jason into their lives.  
  
It wasn’t until Jason died, though, that their true Mist-free memories finally resurfaced.  
  
The ride on Festus to Oklahoma was silent, Piper’s head pressing into Leo’s back as she sniffled. Leo was trying, and failing, to keep the rest of his tears in his head.  
  
“I can’t believe he’s really— _gone._ ” He says, at last. He knows Piper is listening by the way she tightens her arms around his middle.  
  
“I miss him.” Leo can barely hear her, but he brings up a hand and squeezes one of her arms.  
  
“So do I.” They are silent for a while longer, but then he feels Piper’s face muscles contract against his back, into a frown. She sits up, wiping her eyes.  
  
“Beauty queen? You okay?” he asks, glancing back at her to check. She looks confused, staring off into the distance at nothing in particular.  
  
“Yeah, I just…” Piper opens and closes her mouth a few times, before finally seeming to settle on what she wanted to say. “Leo, think back to the Wilderness School. Do you remember Jason? Or, at least, the fake memories we had of him?”  
  
Leo began to think back, a frown forming on his own face as well. He remembers _remembering_ memories about him and Jason and Piper spending their days together at school, but other than that...no Jason. Instead, he is bombarded with memories—his _real_ memories—of himself and Piper, on their own. Specifically, the one time that she slammed a door on his hand by accident.  
  
“No, it’s all just us. Wow, we used to swear a _lot._ Think Hera erased your potty mouth?”  
  
“ _My_ potty mouth? You swore more than I did!” Piper’s half-sad, half-confused expression morphs into an exasperated one, a little smile tugging at the corners of her lips, and Leo grins as much as he can back at her.  
  
“Blasphemy. Or, as my memories would apparently put it, _bullshit._ ”  
  
Piper laughs a bit at that, noogies his head a bit too hard on purpose, and tells him to shut the fuck up.  
  
They’ll get through this, Leo knows it. They have each other, after all, and all the alterations made to their personalities had only helped build them into the people they were today. The past had finally reconnected with the present. They’d be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE tell me what you thought of it! i honestly have no idea whether i did a good job portraying piper and leo's characters or not and also i'd just love to hear from you guys


End file.
